ArtistRack brings to you the visuals for ‘Balm/Burn’ by Kristen Lee Sergeant:
The first thing that greets a visitor to Kristen Lee Sergeantβs website is a curl of smoke. Not static smoke, either; itβs animated, which indicates that something is on fire. Evidence of that blaze is all over Sergeantβs recordings: the jazz vocalist is always singing about conflagrations of one sort or another. Sheβs given her album (one that contains a sterling reinterpretation of the standard βSmoke Gets In Your Eyesβ) an incendiary title: Smolder. βBalm/Burn,β the self-penned single, uses the metaphor of the flame β and the salve β to examine a rocky romantic relationship. Then thereβs Sergeantβs searing stage presence and a vocal approach that never fails to bring the heat to whatever she happens to be singing. Sergeant is a woman unafraid to play with matches.
Small wonder, then, that her career is catching fire. Kristen Lee Sergeantβs star has been on the ascent since the release of Inside Out, her 2016 debut, and a Downbeat Editorβs Pick. That record introduced Sergeant as a cultural translator: a quick-thinking, witty jazz singer with an uncanny ability to tease the complexity and nuance out of standards and classic pop material. Smolder is deeper, brighter, and wiser, and Sergeant establishes herself as both a fearless interpreter and a visionary in her own right. The eclectic, polyglot, imaginative set β one which contains Sergeant originals, a provocative jazz version of Spandau Balletβs βTrue,β and forays into chamber music, classic torch song, and Latin rhythms β is held together by the Massachusetts nativeβs radiant singing. Hers is a voice that can sear and comfort, sometimes simultaneously.
To make the video for βBalm/Burn,β Kristen Lee Sergeant has enlisted the help of director Katherine Horak, a young filmmaker who has already won an audience for her work with the films Home and What We Were. At first glance, Horakβs clip for βBalm/Burnβ seems like a straightforward one β the camera catches Sergeant in performance, delivering her song with absolute conviction, complete focus, and the kind of sultriness that canβt be faked. Yet much like Smolder, the βBalm/Burnβ video is more complicated than it initially seems. Midway through the video, Sergeant is approached by a replica of herself. Is it a confrontation? Are they in danger? Are there erotic undercurrents to this fantasy? The clip doesnβt say. Instead, the doppelganger disappears, and the camera pans back to reveal Sergeant by herself on the shooting stage, stalking a strange, dreamlike room with cloth-draped walls and a floor strewn with sand.
